We arrived at the Asheville, NC airport last Saturday, got our rental car, and were on our way to TN. After sitting in traffic for about a half hour on I40, we got off the highway and stopped at a farm supply/gas station/convenience store to get sodas and whatnot. I bought this thing called a "Fried Pie" that was packaged like a Hostess Fruit Pie. I intended to bring this back for Wendy, but somehow I ended up losing it. I also wanted to buy a small silver bucket that had a big rubber nipple-like thing sticking off the side, for feeding calves, but I wasn't sure how I'd get it on the plane.

George starts talking to the guy behind the counter about how we were heading to TN but there was so much traffic, etc. So the guy tells us there was a big wreck on I40 and that he knows a short cut to take us right around it and back onto I40. So the whole time he's explaining the short cut, an Amish guy is standing there listening. He then says to George he's going to TN too and can he follow us on the short cut? George says sure, so we all walk out together and turns out the Amish guy is with a van full of Amish people with a driver. So the van follows us onto Cove Creek Road, the short cut. Well, Cove Creek Road skirts the very edge of the Smoky Mountains. It was unpaved and winding with a steep drop-off . It also happened to be raining, so it was very foggy with limited visability. This damn "short cut" took about three hours. At one point the road turned into a dead end. Luckily a woman in a big truck happened to be parked there so George got out and asked her what the hell to do. She said she couldn't believe anybody would have told us to take this road and that it must have been a "sick joke." She told us how to back track and get back to civilization. I had to pee so badly at this point so George pulled over and I ran into the woods. At this point George conversed with the driver of the Amish Express and told them to just go ahead, so they took off.

Just as scary as Cove Creek Road was Huddle House. Everything we ordered was yellow. Hash browns in TN are potatos shredded on a cheese grater and fried in a big pile, but they don't become cooked -they just have a lightly browned outside. There were many ways to order hash browns, including "smashed" and "stacked." These words indicate a certain topping, and I believe this hash brown code is universal across TN and NC.

We passed this zombie-like photo of Louise Mandrell every day on the giant sign outside her theatre which was right near where we were staying. We viewed this monolith on a daily basis as well.

Dollywood cost $40 to get in so we said screw that. There was also Dolly's Splash Country. Check out Dolly in her wet suit!

You couldn't go five feet without seeing some kind of Pancake House. Pancakes everywhere. I had really delicious Sugar and Spice Pecan Pancakes at one place. There were NO STARBUCKS anywhere.

Another interesting observation besides the lack of Starbucks was that nobody honks their car horn. We didn't hear one car horn in the five days were there. We realized this after George tapped the horn of his car while the woman in front of us was sitting at a green light. She immediately shot her arm out the window,gave us the bird and peeled off. It was quite a violent reaction to a simple horn tap, which made us realize we hadn't heard anybody else honking their horns. The sound of a car horn in NY is such a daily, constant background noise it was a total shock to realize we hadn't heard one in days.

The Smoky Mountains themselves were actually very beautiful. The vegetation is much different than that of the White Mountains, which I'm much more familiar with. There were rhododendrons everywhere and everything was very damp and moist, almost tropical. We saw lots of weird mushrooms too. One of George's sisters took us on a really nice hike on a trail called Chimney Tops.

Now that I'm back in NY I'm dying to get my movie fix and of course the F train is out of service due to an explosion at a Con-Ed plant in lower Manhattan, and I'm too lazy to walk to a different train. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is playing, which I can't wait to see on the big screen. Looks like I'll be waiting until tomorrow however.